BAE Systems will upgrade the F-35’s electronic warfare system for the jet’s Block 4 upgrade under a $493 million contract awarded by Lockheed Martin, BAE systems said Dec. 15. The new system will go into F-35 production starting with Lot 17 in 2024.
F-35
The U.K.'s. RAF Lakenheath on Dec. 15 became the first European base to receive a U.S. F-35A Lightning II six years after plans for the delivery were announced as part of an eventual basing of two squadrons of the fifth-generation aircraft. “The Valkyries are leading ...
The U.S. has consulted with allies regarding its ongoing Nuclear Posture Review and will continue to do so.
Chronically high operating costs might be tamed with a new deal. A new sustainment contract between the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) and Lockheed Martin, inked in September, will give the company a chance to bring down operating costs over the next three years.
The Defense Department’s cyber challenges are enormous. Systems increasingly rely on software code, much of it incorporating open-source components. Growing dependence on cloud-based systems to host databases and computer workloads also expanded the Pentagon’s attack surface. Conventional cyber defenses based on keeping hackers out of ...
The Air Force trimmed 120 airplanes from its fleet in fiscal 2021, gaining the most aircraft among its F-35 fighter squadrons and giving up the most from its B-1 bomber units, according to data provided by the Air Force. With puts and takes, the Air ...
Australia is declaring its allegiance to the “global rules-based order,” the U.S. Defense Department’s code for keeping China in check, with a host of joint military capability development plans that go beyond the recent high-profile sharing of nuclear submarine technology. “China has risen, and the ...
The Air Force’s mantra under Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has been to “accelerate change or lose,” but the most recent wargaming indicates, so far, the latter, according to Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force’s futurist. The corrective action is to speed up ...
The fastest ways to hobble a major acquisition program are to put it through the funding instability of continuing resolutions or to apply constant major changes to the requirements once the program is well underway, panelists said on an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies ...
Lessons from the KC-46 and F-35 will prove useful to the testing community in the years to come.
The $725.8 billion bill would raise DOD spending some $25 billion above the total proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration back in May.
Red air operations and training are priorities for USAF in the coming decade.
